Goals

As soon as I arrived at the conference venue, I was welcomed by a lady in charge of VIP and speakers. She seemed happy to see me & asked me enthusiastically if I knew in which seminar room my talk would take place. “Yes. Seminar room 3 & it is tomorrow” I said. “Great! I am now taking you to the VIP/Speakers lounge so that you can eat or drink something,” she added. One part of me longed for breakfast in the lounge. The other half of mine responded: “Thank you. Actually I would like to directly go to the keynote area to listen to the keynote talk.”

This will be the fifth and final article that I am going to write on the subject of resilience. The first three articles attempt to understand the problem from a mental and physical perspective. The fourth article talks about the value of goals, purpose and presence in giving us focus. A focus is essential in helping us to endure life’s challenges and ups and downs.

You start with end in mind and work backwards to establish the steps that you need to complete that will take you from A to B. It’s something that most of us will have done at some point in our lives. If you want to move house, refit a bathroom or board a plane, you have to work out what you need to do and then the steps required to do it. This is a great example of tactical planning and we do it every day.

But do we apply the same process to our strategic goals?

Technology has given us the ability to measure everything, and we’ve become hooked like addicts.  Is all this measuring helping us or hurting us?  The paradox in measuring is that you can see measured improvement when you stop measuring.  But how will you know?